Empirical Analysis Of Psychiatric Compulsory Health Care System

Freedom and order are two core values in rule of law, but they often conflict with each other in law enforcement due to different subjects individuals and collectives. This is particularly true for the mentally ill. Being discriminated and ignored by the main stream of society prevents the patients from having basic personal freedom or having medical treatment. Most of developed countries have had sound psychiatric health care system. Compared with these countries, China makes small progress in related legal construction. In this field, psychiatric compulsory care system, as a basic health care system in our psychiatric treatment filed, plays an important role in management of patients being in and out hospital as well as treatment they have in hospital. However, the related law and regulations have fell behind, leading to frequent happening of some influential psychosis-related accidents in recent years. These accidents shocked our society and warned us of defects of our system. Based on the status quo of China’s psychiatric compulsory health care system, this paper use empirical analysis as a method to compare and analyze several recent serious cases in the system, in order to summarize the defects of current legal system as well as the reasons of defects. Combined with experiences of other countries and regions, this paper will give suggestions about how to improve China’s psychiatric compulsory health care system.Besides Introduction and Conclusion, this paper is divided into four parts.The first part is description of China’s current situation of psychiatric compulsory health care system, including the basic contents of the system and other related systems.The second part delivers case analyses of China’s psychiatric compulsory health care system, including cases of Zhu Jinhong (Jiangsu Province), Xu Lindong (Henan Province) and Chen Jianan (Guangdong Province). I will reflect the defects of current laws and regulations which showed in these cases and make further explosion in reasons of the defects from multi-perspectives such as legislation, systems, procedures and finance.The third part discusses learning from other countries’ psychiatric compulsory health care systems, mainly about construction of mental health systems in the United States, UK and Japan.The fourth part gives suggestions of how to improve China’s psychiatric compulsory health care systems. First of all, introduction of a complete Mental Health Act is in urgent need. Secondly, a specific standard of patients about compulsory treatment should be set. Thirdly, the government and guardians should be prevented by legislation from abusing rights. Then, the management procedures of admitting mental-ill patients into hospital should be regulated. Last but not least, I hope the relevant policies would strengthen input of social assistance and judicial guarantee so the laws and regulations can be implemented.